On MSNBC and in his Creators Syndicate column, Pat Buchanan claimed that climate change is "a fraud, and a scam, and a hoax," and as evidence, suggested that greenhouse gases are not warming the planet because the Antarctic ice sheet has expanded in the past three decades. However, the source Buchanan cited in his column -- a press release from the British Antarctic Survey -- undercuts his claim, saying that the ice increase is "a result of the ozone hole delaying the impact of greenhouse gas increases on the climate of the continent," but that "this will not last."

On Friday, the Washington Postfinally ran an op-ed in response to former half-term governor of Alaska Sarah Palin's recent falsehood-filled global warming column.

In defending the paper's decision to run Palin's op-ed, Post editor Op-Ed editor Autumn Brewington told Editor & Publisher that the Post had received an offer from a professor who wanted to write a response to Palin. But Brewington seemed to be dismissive of the offer: "It is always interesting to see who reaches out to us."

Brewington didn't name the professor, so we can't be sure if she was referring to Michael Mann. In any case, the Post didn't run Mann's column until after running a response from Sarah Palin to Post columnist Eugene Robinson's criticism of her.

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the Post runs a response from Palin to Mann, and then, eventually, simply starts running daily transcripts of everything Palin said the day before.

The right-wing noise machine is sure that a snowstorm in December is proof of something, they're just split on what exactly.

Newt Gingrich became the latest to play the ridiculous "it's snowing so global warming must be a hoax" card. Gingrich took to Twitter - where he's been schooled before - on Saturday morning to share a few thoughts about the storm:

newtgingrich As callista and i watched what dc weather says will be 12 to 22 inches of snow i wondered if God was sending a message about copenhagen

newtgingrich After the expanding revelations of dishonesty in climategate having a massive snow storm as obama promises our money to the world is ironic

newtgingrich There is something jimmy carter like about weather service upgrading frrom winter storm to blizzard as global warming conference wants US $

Of course as Media Matters has pointed out ad infinitum, individual storms have nothing to do with human-caused climate change.

But maybe the DC "Snowpocalypse" is a sign of something else. TPM's Brian Beutler wrote Friday night about the complications the storm may have on the health care vote and concluded with this line:

With all these added complications, don't be surprised to hear a new Republican talking point: Even Mother Nature hates health care reform.

I hate to correct him, but actually the talking point is that God hates the Democrats' health care deform. With funding death panels and abortions, of course the Almighty would send a snow storm or, in Brian's words, a snowpocalypse to shut down Washington.

Oh, and kudos to Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council for organizing the "pray-in." Looks to be working.

So does that mean DC residents should blame God or the Family Research Council for shutting down the city?

On his Fox News show, host Sean Hannity falsely claimed that a "major Russian climate change organization dropped a bombshell" report claiming that "much of its climate data was tampered with by a leading British research center" and that "any of their data that could help disprove global warming was simply ignored." In fact, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) is not a "climate change organization"; it is an economic and social policy think tank headed by Andrei Illarionov, an economist, climate skeptic, and fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute; moreover, the report was not about "their" data -- it simply purported to analyze how the UK Met Office used data from Russian meteorological stations.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Cato Institute fellow and author Patrick Michaels claimed that recently stolen emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) reveal "a silencing of climate scientists" and "dramatically weakened the case for emissions reductions." Michaels cited emails that show scientists' objections to certain papers being published in journals, however, the scientists do not appear to be in a position "to bias" the scientific literature, because several of the papers they criticized were published or cited, and in one paper's case, editors at the journal conceded that it should not have been published as written.

Right-wing media have highlighted recent snowfall during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, often suggesting that the winter storm is evidence that climate change is, in Rush Limbaugh's words, "a fraud." But climate scientists reject the notion that short-term changes in weather, let alone individual storms, bear any relevance to the global warming debate, and several major climate data centers have said that, thus far, 2009 is one of the warmest years on record.

The New York Times was forced to issue two corrections after relying on Capitol Hill anonymous sourcing for its flawed report on emails from former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The Clinton debacle is the latest example of why the media should be careful when relying on leaks from partisan congressional sources -- this is far from the first time journalists who did have been burned.

Several Fox News figures are attempting to shift partial blame onto Samuel DuBose for his own death at the hands of a Cincinnati police officer during a traffic stop, arguing DuBose should have cooperated with the officer's instructions if he wanted to avoid "danger."

Iowa radio host Steve Deace is frequently interviewed as a political analyst by mainstream media outlets like NPR, MSNBC, and The Hill when they need an insider's perspective on the GOP primary and Iowa political landscape. However, these outlets may not all be aware that Deace gained his insider status in conservative circles by broadcasting full-throated endorsements of extreme right-wing positions on his radio show and writing online columns filled with intolerant views that he never reveals during main stream media appearances.